Feds: On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t use paper applications to sign up for ObamaCare either

posted at 2:02 pm on December 7, 2013 by Allahpundit

If the website doesn’t work (much) and paper applications don’t work (they take too long to process), what’s left? What possible medium could they use at this point to get people who are desperate for coverage enrolled before December 23rd? Our only hope now, my friends, might be … the noble floppy disk. Don’t laugh — the last office in America that still uses them lies, of course, within the federal government.

Is this good news or bad news for Obama and HHS?

Federal health officials, after encouraging alternate sign-up methods amid the fumbled rollout of their online insurance website, began quietly urging counselors around the country this week to stop using paper applications to enroll people in health insurance because of concerns those applications would not be processed in time…

After a conference call earlier this week with federal health officials, Illinois health officials sent a memo Thursday to their roughly 1,600 navigators saying there is no way to complete marketplace enrollment through a paper application. The memo, which Claffey said was based on guidance from federal officials, said paper applications should be used only if other means aren’t available…

That contradicts what federal health officials told reporters during a national media call this week, during which they said there were no problems with paper applications…

In early November, President Barack Obama himself encouraged paper applications as one of several alternatives to the federal website.

The good news: I assume it’s only because the website really is working better that they feel comfortable nudging people back towards using Healthcare.gov and away from paper applications. The paper option was always more of a political fallback than a technical one anyway. The info on your paper form gets entered into the same system that serves the website; if the latter doesn’t work, the former won’t either. By discouraging paper now, HHS is doing what it can to free up some agency and insurance industry manpower for the nightmarish logistical challenges to come later this month. The bad news: One advantage that the paper form has over the website is that you can trust that the information on it is correct. That’s no small thing when the feds are still reporting a website “834 error rate” of 10 percent. Will insurers save more time waiting for people to enroll on Healthcare.gov and then painstakingly correcting the errors in their files or processing and inputting paper forms themselves? Beyond that, the more people decide to skip paper enrollment and stick with the website, the greater the risk that the site will be overwhelmed by traffic and crash down the stretch. Not a huge risk right now, but what about next weekend when there are less than 10 days left before the enrollment deadline?

Regardless, this raises a new question: How heavy is the backlog of paper forms that the feds now feel they have no choice but to cry “no mas”? You would think they’d want to keep all methods of applying open in December even if the website’s functioning better than before. John Ekdahl theorized on Wednesday that maybe the much-hyped surge of 29,000 enrollments in the first two days of December wasn’t a product of people flooding into the site after all but merely the feds clearing a backlog of enrollments that had been caught temporarily in limbo while Healthcare.gov was being repaired in November. (A commenter later gave some credence to the theory.) If that’s true, then no one outside HHS itself knows whether there really has been a new surge of enrollments this month. And if it’s not true, how come HHS isn’t giving us daily updates on the alleged big flood of sign-ups? Clearly Sebelius is receiving daily numbers or else they couldn’t have given us the figures for December 1st and 2nd. Where are the numbers for the 3rd through today? Why not share them?

By the way, in case you missed it in Headlines, the administrator of Maryland’s state ObamaCare exchange, which was touted pre-launch as a model for others before crashing into one technical brick wall after another, has now resigned. Maryland’s enrollment goal through next March is 150,000 people. Total so far as of yesterday: 3,758 and counting.

By the way, in case you missed it in Headlines, the administrator of the Maryland state ObamaCare exchange, which was touted pre-launch as a model for others before crashing into one technical brick wall after another, has now resigned. Maryland’s enrollment goal by next March is 150,000 people. Total so far as of yesterday: 3,758 and counting.

Officials say Phil Schiliro, who as Obama’s top liaison to Capitol Hill helped push the Affordable Care Act through Congress, is taking on a short-term assignment to help coordinate policy surrounding the law.

He’ll work with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, other agencies and members of Congress.

He, and all of them, directly to Hades. Burn slowly, you traitors of the land.

That SNL skit where HHS Secretary Sebelius was offering Encarta 95 and 1000 free hours of AOL is looking less and less like parody.

One question that still hasn’t been answered is just how many of the enrollments so far are from the producers and how many are just Medicaid enrollees (i.e. folks who take more from the system than they pay into it).

Time for a round of ads featuring Paul Bunyan explaining why patience is a virtue.

Seriously, and I could be wrong about this. I’ve not heard of one state exchange that is only marginally better than the federal exchange. Maryland was indeed very smug about how awesome their system was pre-launch. Oregon was another model program that has yet to enroll anybody. And the DC exchange is telling people that “your session got expired.”

Like many of you, I’m frustrated with the president’s health care law, especially where jobs and working families are concerned. I say this not only as a congresswoman and chair of the Republican Women’s Policy Committee; I say it as a nurse and the mother of a son in college.

After all, it’s often women who make the health care decisions for our families. We put a lot of time and thought into these choices and how they’ll affect our budgets

So by canceling your insurance – despite a promise to let you keep your plan – the Obama administration is essentially saying it knows what’s best for you and your family. Not only that, they are making you pay more – usually much more – and in many cases, taking away the doctors you’ve been seeing for years.

If you want to talk about a ‘war on women,’ look no further than this health care law.

California’s CoveredCalifornia also remains a disaster, with it being utterly impossible to get any straight answers from the organization – just lies and spin.

An old joke about the EPA was around an announcement from the organization that breathing was found to cause the introduction of carcinogens into one’s system – so all were being asked to stop breathing. We’re not that far away from a similar type of announcement coming from HHS / CMS – that continued use of Healthcare.gov was causing major problems to the government, and therefore, all use of the website needs to be curtailed.

Happy Nomad on December 7, 2013 at 2:11 PM

One of the challenges around not only the Fed, but also the State websites is that the ‘official’ information that is being released is carefully structured to paint the best possible light on the situation. Hence we talk about ‘enrollments’ and not completed applications and issued policies – even though that information is easily determined and likely tracked. It took 7 weeks after launch for HHS / CMS technical leaders to admit that 30-40% of the website, including nearly all of the back-end / payment processing elements, still weren’t built. It took 7 weeks after launch for the unilateral one year delay of the small business portal even though they knew 4 months ago the small business portal wasn’t close to being ready for 10/1/13.

Of the numbers that are being released – the vast majority of those signing up via the federal or state sites are those who are newly qualified for the expanded medicare coverages. In some states, 80% of those signing up fit that category.

CoveredCalifornia, for example, is telling us that 24% of those who signed up for their system are the 18-29 age category, which is about what the population breakdown is. But they will not answer any questions about if they are part of the ‘young healthy’ needed for the viability of the system – or if they are, as most suspect, newly qualified for the expanded Medicare / MediCal coverages.

If the numbers were good, if the website worked, we wouldn’t be lied to in the manner in which we are. This is a massive debacle and a complete failure of ‘big government’. They are doing all they can to hide the scope of this fiasco.

How come it used to take like 6 weeks to have a policy once you signed up for it because you had to sign up, be accepted, and then pay. And now it only takes 7 days (Dec. 23 to be covered by Jan. 1), and if you sign up on Dec. 24, are you then covered Jan. 2?

Would we be required to use the legacy 8 inch floppy or the much more modern 5 inch floppy disk? Perhaps that may be too buggy for federal government computers. Maybe we should submit applications on paper tape, or IBM punch cards?

Also, WHY is this even a category? Shouldn’t it be the 27-29 age category, since the 18-26 age category will still be on their parents’ policies? Why is that age even encouraged to sign up for new coverage?

If the numbers were good, if the website worked, we wouldn’t be lied to in the manner in which we are. This is a massive debacle and a complete failure of ‘big government’. They are doing all they can to hide the scope of this fiasco.

Athos on December 7, 2013 at 2:30 PM

The Dems running in 2014 are already jumpy. The Landrieu thread nailed it talks about her blaming it all on a bad website. But if the real truth were to be told jumpy Democrats would be freaking out. The administration seems to think that if they get past the next few weeks then it will all be better. I think that is optimistic.

The Washington Healthplanfinder site has been down for repairs since Tuesday and isn’t expected to be back up until Monday at the earliest.
The Seattle Times reports that the site first noted some performance issues two-and-a-half weeks ago.
“It has been a very difficult thing because the problems are very random and intermittent,” Curt Kwak, chief information officer of the Washington Health Benefits Exchange, told The Times. “We still haven’t located the root cause.”
The problems aren’t related to connections between the exchange and the federal data hub and state agencies that evaluate eligibility.
The exchange issued this statement Friday: “This week, Washington Healthplanfinder customers experienced intermittent slowness and even brief outages as they attempted to complete applications online. To address these issues as quickly as possible, we have brought the site down so that we may better troubleshoot and conduct necessary maintenance.”

If the website doesn’t work (much) and paper applications don’t work (they take too long to process), what’s left? What possible medium could they use at this point to get people who are desperate for coverage enrolled before December 23rd? Our only hope now, my friends, might be … the noble floppy disk. Don’t laugh — the last office in America that still uses them lies, of course, within the federal government.

The Covered California exchange said it started handing out this consumer information this week as part of a pilot program to help people enroll ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by Jan. 1.

The names provided include people who started an insurance application on the Covered California website since enrollment launched Oct. 1, but for whatever reason never picked a health plan or completed the sign-up process.

The state said it provided information on tens of thousands of people who logged into the state’s website, but it didn’t know the exact number.

The exchange said agents were given names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses if available.

My, my, my. Could they possibly have screwed this up any worse? I suppose, since it’s the government we’re talking about, but never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted it would be this bad. I feel bad for those who lost their coverage. I wonder if the administration does.

The administration seems to think that if they get past the next few weeks then it will all be better. I think that is optimistic.

Happy Nomad on December 7, 2013 at 2:59 PM

I’m convinced, by the numerous examples of sheer and complete contempt demonstrated by Obama / Administration towards the American people that they believe as Barack does – the average mainstream American is stupid, ignorant, apathetic, and so disengaged that all they need is another distraction or a whiff of ‘good news’ to move beyond Obamacare’s launch challenges. Like Obama, his supporters also remain far too confident that the shills and sycophants in the media will do all they can to cover for the President’s failings.

This basic assumption will be, ultimately, the biggest miscalculation of the Obama Administration – and why any optimism whatsoever is massively misplaced.

This basic assumption will be, ultimately, the biggest miscalculation of the Obama Administration – and why any optimism whatsoever is massively misplaced.

Athos on December 7, 2013 at 4:07 PM

Yeah, even the media isn’t able to hide the stink.

On October 1st, the media was helping roll out Obamacare with hype that was Mardi Gras, New Years Eve, and a birthday rolled all into one. Even with the government shutdown there were stories of people so happy to finally get “affordable” healthcare and gushing over Obamacare.

The subsequent weeks and continued lies didn’t work leading to the early November “Sham Wow speech” where the promise was that all the glitches in the system would be solved by the end of the month. That too turned out to be a lie.

When the website wasn’t fixed by 30 November, the narrative changed to just how much user experience is so much better. And BTW, if you think you’ve got insurance you just might want to call the insurer to see if they know who you are. Or if maybe your cocker spaniel suddenly has coverage.

And so here we are. It is clear that people who have tried to sign up for Obamacare can not. But the administration is banking on the idea that, after the “chaos” of January and February, people taxing the system for coverage will abate enough for them to do some real fixes to the enrollment process. None of this even takes into account the fundamental problems with Obamacare.

i was in a diner this snowy day, filled with factory workers, truck drivers, and deputy sherifs. The talk is usually about football, cars, and dogs. Today there was much mockery of Obamacare and variations on the keep your health plan statement. If you like your Edsel, you can keep your Edsell If you like your mother-in-law, you can keep your mother-in-law, etc etc.

Lawsuit. Given California’s arcane personal-privacy laws, that likely is a breach. Force the lunatic Obama Party that owns and operates the state government to admit they are incapable of following their own laws.

I looked up Phil Schiliro’s background. Wiki says he’s a law school grad and was editor-in-chief of the law review, Environmental Law. No mention that he ever practiced law—he’s lived his life in politics and worked on the Hill for some of the worst of the usual suspects, Waxman and Daschle.

He has no background knowledge to oversee getting a website up to speed. Is he even a good executive or manager or is his chief skill that of political arm twisting?

Sounds like more of the Obama modus operandi of when in trouble, lie and campaign.

Where is the Sierra Club and all the eco-nuts on all the “waste” in paper due to Obamacare? They told me I couldn’t have a stinking, reliable oil pipeline coming from Canada, but cutting down a ton of trees for socialized medicine is ok?

Has Obama been informed yet of these new glitches. Or will he come out and tell everyone he wasn’t informed directly and no one is more upset than he is. How does POS sleep at night knowing what a fraud and fake he is?

The good news: I assume it’s only because the website really is working better that they feel comfortable nudging people back towards using Healthcare.gov and away from paper applications.

It is not working “better”. It is restricting the number of people who can use it at the same time. They did not “fix” anything.

Imagine if Amazon did this. Imagine it could only handle 50,000 people at one time and whenever the 50,001st tried to use it they got a message telling them to come back later. Imagine Amazon then tried to tell customers they had “fixed” their site and it was now more usable.

This is not a fix.

Imagine a new baseball stadium that was supposed to hold 50,000 was opened with stairs and walkways that enable only 1000 people to enter and get to their seats in an hour. When they tried to let 50,000 in at one time they clogged up the stairs and walkways so badly that only about 100 could make their way to their assigned seats in an hour. Is restricting entry to the ballpark to only a 1000 an hour an acceptable “fix”?

Analogies abound.

Imagine a new expressway that was designed to have five lanes in each direction. Imagine it opened for use and four of the lanes in each direction were unusable and they did not bother to tel anyone that, because they did not know much of it was unpaved and nothing but holes in the dirt. Imagine the “fix” for the traffic jams that ensued was to restrict the number of cars that could enter and use the expressway to only what could fit in one lane in each direction. Is that a “fix”.

Imagine a Walmart that planned to service 2000 customers at one time had aisles that could only accommodate one person at a time and there were only 20 aisles? When it first opened they let 2000 people in and they clogged up all of the aisles to the extent that no one could get what they wanted to buy and check out. Imagine the “fix” is to let only 20 people into the store at a time? How long would it stay in business?